Faculty Evaluator: Phil McGough, Ph.D.
Student Researchers: Stephen Hayth, Brian Baptista, Deanna Battaglia

On Sunday, December 13, 1998, local residents of Hinchley Wood, England, occupied the parking lot of their local pub to prevent McDonald’s from building on the site. Their 24-hours-a-day sit-in campaign lasted 18 months, received national publicity, and galvanized community support against McDonald’s. The community organized to become Residents Against McDonald’s (RAM). RAM held numerous large public meetings in protest, set up marches, and delivered newsletters door to door throughout the community. Their campaign forced McDonald’s onto the defensive, stopping all work on the site.

RAM exposed how local planning laws allow companies to steamroll over the wishes of communities, ignoring expressed concerns over the quality of local lives and environment. Profiteering business chains have used planning law loopholes to continue to invade neighborhoods, often replacing green spaces and local facilities with their standardized, mediocre products.

Faced with widespread community-based opposition to the building of new restaurants throughout England, McDonald’s tactics seem to favor the purchase of pubs precisely because of the national A-3 planning guidelines, which enable it to avoid the usual local planning applications and citizen objections. When McDonald’s leases or purchases neighborhood pubs to avoid the usual local planning applications and guidelines, local residents become outraged and feel compelled to resist.

This time the residents were successful. After RAM’s incredible 552-day continuous occupation, McDonald’s threw in the towel and handed back the lease on the pub to the original owners. RAM celebrated a historic victory. Hinchley Wood residents can now join the growing list of places in which local communities have successfully defended themselves against huge controlling corporations.

RAM is now conducting a national survey of local planning departments throughout England about the issue of fast food units replacing local pubs. The United Kingdom Government Department of Transport and Regions has announced a review of the A-3 laws.

The post 25. Community Activists Outsit McDonald’s appeared first on Project Censored.

Evaluator: Andrew Botterell, Ph.D.
Student Researchers: Steve Quartz, Nathalie Manneville

A United States government task force has released its final report to the public recommending globalization of the U.S. defense industry, even if it results in proliferation of conventional weapons.

The Defense Science Board’s (DSB) Task Force on Globalization and Security is a 27-member appointed board, composed mostly of Department of Defense (DoD) and private industry representatives. The DSB encourages the Pentagon to facilitate transnational mergers of defense corporations in order to avoid eventual conflicts with European countries over global arms market shares. Overall, the DSB task force advocates reducing DoD’s role in controlling arms exports, and holds little or no confidence in multilateral arms control agreements. The DSB recommends that the Pentagon automatically allow the export of military equipment, except when the United States is the sole possessor of the technology. However, since current U.S. practice allows arms exporters to outsource high-tech weaponry abroad before it enters the U.S. arsenal, such Pentagon exceptions would probably be rare. The task force recommends that the U.S. government stop worrying about protecting American military technologies since, in their judgment, most military technology will inevitably become available elsewhere in the future.

The DoD, State Department, and Congress lack consensus on these controversial issues. The Pentagon has conducted a variety of studies on globalization and related export control issues, and the State Department, anxious not to let its authority over arms export controls be usurped, has reportedly also done its own evaluations.

The DSB does acknowledge that its steps to maximize U.S. military capability may create tensions with other U.S. foreign policy objectives, particularly those achieved by limiting foreign access to U.S. defense technology, products and services. Yet the DSB feels that “military dominance,” rather than the promotion of U.S. foreign policy objectives and security, is the DoD’s “core responsibility.” The DSB considers U.S. State Department efforts to prevent or control conventional weapons proliferation as naive at best. The DSB report describes international efforts to control conventional weapons proliferation, such as the Wassenaar Arrangement, as only “marginally successful.”

A few large companies already dominate the American arms industry, and Europe’s defense firms are rapidly consolidating as well. Germany’s Daimler-Chrysler and France’s Aerospatiale announced a planned merger to form the European Aeronautics, Defense and Space Co. (EADS), and BAE Systems now monopolizes the U.K. defense industry. Increased partnership between U.S. and EU defense corporations is needed, DSB warns, to avoid a protectionist “Fortress America” from going to war with a hostile “Fortress Europe” over market share.

The Federation of American Scientists is concerned that transnational arms mergers would create very powerful defense companies, further shifting control away from governments and toward private industry. Transnational companies will be eager to market their arms to many different countries, and will adapt the lowest common standards for exporting arms to others nations. With fewer controls and diffused production capabilities, conventional weapons will likely proliferate, posing long-term security risks around the world. Globalizing production of weapons is easy; globalizing responsibility for arms is a real challenge.

Update by Tamar Gabelnick

While embracing the idea of a globalized defense industry, the Pentagon and U.S. arms makers have claimed that cumbersome U.S. export-licensing rules hinder exports to, and joint projects with, European and other allies. The Pentagon alleged that an overhaul of the U.S. arms export system was needed to avoid the creation of Fortress Europe, wherein consolidating European arms companies would shut American arms and technology out of the European market. With lightning speed and, according to the GAO, an inadequate analysis based on faulty anecdotal evidence, the Pentagon developed a set of 17 initiatives to expedite the arms export licensing process, especially to NATO members, Japan, and Australia. Despite protest by the State Department, which has the legal authority to decide arms export policy, the administration approved the Defense Trade Security Initiative (DTSI) in late May 2000.

The administration’s initiatives will fundamentally alter the U.S. export licensing system, endangering a process that has helped control weapons diversion, unauthorized re-exports, and misguided sales. The most far reaching of the changes would grant to certain allies (beginning with the UK and Australia, with the possibility of including other countries) a license waiver for exports of unclassified weapons systems, effectively ending U.S. control over the transfer of arms to those countries. A similar arrangement with Canada had to be suspended in 1999 after Canadian firms transferred U.S. military technology to Iran and China. Other ill-advised reforms include loosening the rules on third-party transfers of U.S. weapons; creating broader export licenses to cover entire weapons systems (munitions, engines, and other sub-components were previously approved individually to allow for greater scrutiny); and speeding up the licensing process for NATO members (including making greater use of exemptions for transfers of technology and training). All will reduce the level of scrutiny of arms export decisions in the U.S. and oversight of U.S. weapons abroad.

The administration approved these major policy changes with little public debate or consultation of arms control experts. The mainstream media ignored the issue until the announcement of the completion of the reform package at the May NATO Defense Ministerial meeting. At that point, the coverage was minimal and presented the official view that the DTSI would promote bureaucratic efficiency and boost the defense industry’s European business opportunities. Only the trade press covered the story throughout the spring, though again, the articles were geared toward their main audience, the arms industry. The arms control perspective was only provided in op-eds and newsletters written by the Federation of American Scientists and other arms control organizations.

For more information on the export reform process, visit the FAS website at:http://www.fas.org/asmp/campaigns/control.html. Along with background information and articles on the subject, you will find official documents and government website links on DTSI. You can also contact Tamar Gabelnick at the Federation of American Scientists with any queries at (202) 675-1018.

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In These Times, August 21, 2000
Title: What’s In Your Green Tea?
Author: Frances Cerra Whittelsey
http://www.inthesetimes.com/whittelsey2419.html

Faculty evaluator: Suzanne Toczyski, Ph.D., Lynn Cominsky, Ph.D.
Student researchers: Stephen Hayth, Stephanie Garber, Adam Sullens, Nathalie Manneville

Corporate media coverage: Chicago Tribune, 12/26/00 Section 1p.10

For years the public has been told that a low level of chemical exposure holds no significant risk to humans. The results of recent studies, however, show that even small amounts of chemicals (in drinking water, in foods) may in fact be very damaging.

One of the most important areas of research is the field of endocrine disrupters. New research in this area has shown that chemicals like dioxin, PCBs, and DDT act at very low levels to interfere with normal hormone functions of the body. Very low levels of these chemicals have been linked to a wide variety of health problems such as neurological and developmental problems, immune system disruption, learning disabilities, birth defects, and other reproductive anomalies.

The truth is that scientists know very little about how the body responds to small amounts of numerous chemicals. In the recent endocrine studies, health effects are being reported at levels of exposure not anticipated by our current understanding of how chemicals operate in the human body. The implication is that the standard methods for assessing chemical risks may not work for many low-level chemical exposures.

One proponent of the new thinking about how chemicals impact the human body is Dr. Pete Myers, one of the co-authors of Our Stolen Future. This book explores the threat contamination poses to fetal development, and the potentially wide-ranging impacts of chemicals on human potential. According to Myers, chemical attacks against fetal development work because some chemicals act as imposters, insinuating themselves in the body’s natural hormone system that normally directs fetal development. These natural hormone signals work at very low concentrations. When traditional methods for measuring toxic effects and assessing risks are relied on solely, the impacts of low levels of chemicals that disrupt hormone signals will not be understood. As a result, risk factors for these low-level chemical exposures will be underestimated and established improperly.

Frances Cerra Whittelsey reports that seven out of ten green tea samples tested from New York store shelves showed DDT or Dursban contamination. Both are cancer-causing chemicals banned by the EPA in food products for the United States. Dangerous pesticides are still being used in countries all over the world and U.S. consumers have no assurance that green tea is free of pesticide contamination.

What is becoming apparent is that important low-level effects, such as disruption of a hormone signaling system, may be hidden by higher levels of chemical exposure, which cause more obvious impacts that are easier to measure. The full impact of low-level exposure may not be visible for years, perhaps decades, until the infant has grown into an adult. This time lag means that evidence linking cause and effect may no longer be available when the effect becomes apparent. In fact, the timing of the exposure may be more important than the amount. Exposure at a certain step of fetal development may have a dramatic effect, while the same exposure perhaps only a day or two later may have no effect or very little effect.

Lastly, hormone disrupters occur in complex mixtures in the human body. Each of us has several hundred synthetic chemicals in our blood. Every baby born throughout the world has been exposed in the womb to complex mixtures. Exactly how these chemicals will act together to interfere with normal biological functions over time is the question we have yet to answer.

Update by Frances Cerra Whittelsey

The importance of this story is that it shows the connection between the purity of the American food supply and conditions in poverty-stricken regions of the world. Even though DDT has been banned in America for nearly three decades, this persistent organic pollutant still contaminates our food supply through imports from countries still using the pesticide. It was particularly shocking for a breast cancer survivor to find DDT in the organic green tea she had been drinking to try to prevent the reoccurrence of her cancer. If Americans wish to have a food supply that its free of DDT, then we must give priority-for selfish reasons, if not humanitarian-to helping the impoverished people of Asia, Africa and India fight malaria by means other than DDT.

Since publication of my article, diplomats from 122 countries finalized the text of a global treaty that will eliminate or minimize the use of persistent organic pollutants. Because of DDT’s still-essential role in malaria prevention, the proposed treaty allows a health exemption for the chemical in malaria-prone countries. The treaty will be signed at a diplomatic conference in Stockholm on May 22 or 23, 2001, but it must then be ratified by 50 governments before it takes effect.

I am not aware of any mainstream press response to my story. There have been significant stories about the suffering and economic depression caused by malaria, and about the proposed global treaty, but none have connected the situation to the American food supply.

Sources of information:

On the global treaty: The United Nations Environment Program,
http://www.chem.unep.ch/pops
On connection of DDT to cancer: Breast Cancer Fund 800-487-0492, http://www.breastcancerfund.org

Other information:
Physicians for Social Responsibility, Karen Perry: 202-898-0150
World Wildlife Fund, Rich Liroff: 202-778-9644

Frances Cerra Whittelsey: fwhittelsey@isa-ed.org

The post 23. Very Small Levels of Chemical Exposures Can be Dangerous appeared first on Project Censored.

Faculty Evaluator: Mary King M.D.
Student researchers: Jennifer Swift, Licia Marshall,

Corporate media coverage: AP and UPI news wires 2/29/00

A Spanish medical team’s study released in Madrid in February 2000 has shown that tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active chemical in marijuana, destroys tumors in lab rats. These findings, however, are not news to the U.S. government. A study in Virginia in 1974 yielded similar results but was suppressed by the DEA, and in 1983 the Reagan/Bush administration tried to persuade U.S. universities and researchers to destroy all cannabis research work done between 1966 and 1976, including compendiums in libraries.

The research was conducted by a medical team led by Dr. Manuel Guzman of Complutence University in Madrid. In the study, brains of 45 lab rats were injected with a cancer cell, which produced tumors. On the twelfth day of the experiment, 15 of the rats were injected with THC and 15 with Win-55, 212-2, a synthetic compound similar to THC. The untreated rats died 12-18 days after the development of the tumors. THC treated rats lived significantly longer than the control group. Although three were unaffected by the THC, nine lived 19-35 days, while tumors were completely eradicated in three others. The rats treated with Win-55,212-2 showed similar results.

In an e-mail interview for this story, the Madrid researcher said he had heard of the Virginia study, but had never been able to locate literature on it. “I am aware of the existence of that research. In fact I have attempted many times to obtain the journal article on the original investigation by theses people, but it has proven impossible,” Guzman said. His response wasn’t surprising, considering that in 1983 the Reagan/Bush administration tried to persuade American universities and researchers to destroy all 1966/76 cannabis research work, including compendiums in libraries, reports Jack Herer. “We know that large amounts of information have since disappeared,” he says.

Guzman provided the title of the work-”Antineoplastic Activity of Cannabinoids,” an article in a 1975 Journal of the National Cancer Institute-and author Raymond Cushing obtained a copy at the UC Medical School Library in Davis, California, and faxed it to Madrid. The 1975 article does not mention breast cancer tumors, which were featured in the only newspaper story ever to appear about the 1974 study in the local section of the Washington Post on August 18, 1974. The headline read, “Cancer Curb Is Studied,” and was followed in part by, “The active chemical agent in marijuana curbs the growth of three kinds of cancer in mice and may also suppress the immunity reaction that causes rejection of organ transplants, a Medical College of Virginia team has discovered. The researchers found that THC slowed the growth of lung cancers, breast cancers, and a virus-induced leukemia in laboratory mice, and prolonged their lives by as much as 36 percent.”

Drug Enforcement Agency officials shut down the Virginia study and all further cannabis research, according to Jack Herer, who reports on these events in his book, The Emperor Wears No Clothes. In 1976, President Gerald Ford put an end to all public cannabis research and granted exclusive research rights to major pharmaceutical companies. These companies set out-unsuccessfully-to develop synthetic forms of THC that would deliver all the medical benefits without the “high.”

Update by Raymond Cushing

When I was a cub reporter twenty-eight years ago at the daily Advocate in Stamford, Connecticut, my first city editor-a white-haired veteran of the International Herald Tribune named Marian Campbell-told me that the cure for cancer was the holy grail of all news stories.

“Unless they discover the cure for cancer,” she would say over the clackety-clack of the manual typewriters, “this paper goes to press on time.”

What I found out a quarter-century later is that not even the cure for cancer is a big enough story to crack the Berlin Wall of media censorship in this country. Toss in the facts that the cure appears to be a benign substance that has been illegal for 63 years, and that the government knowingly suppressed evidence of its curative powers 25 years, and you get twice the storyæand twice the censorship.

I won’t name the “investigative journalists” who didn’t respond when I sent them this story. I won’t list the numerous “progressive” publications that ignored it. I won’t describe the forbidding sense of professional isolation I endured in the months I tried to place the story.

Suffice it to say that it’s what one would expect in a society that has criminalized its own young for two generations around the cannabis issue simply because we were told to do so.

Thousands of innocent people who are in U.S. prisons for possessing or selling “the cure for cancer” await liberation and reparations. Someday our grandchildren will look back and ask, “What did you do to set the cannabis prisoners free?”

Here’s what any responsible journalist should be doing:

Go to primary sources when evaluating cannabis research. The AP and other news organizations love to elevate “bad science” and suppress “good science” when it comes to cannabis. You have to read the original research articles yourself and make your own judgments.

Investigate and report on the war on children that is a major component of the war on drugs. The marijuana laws are the main tool the police use to persecute minors. No other policy affects more families in more insidious and devastating ways than cannabis prohibition.

Learn about the history of cannabis prohibition and about the pharmaceutical, liquor, and tobacco giants that are behind it. If you don’t know the history of cannabis and hemp prohibition, you’re too ignorant to justifiably call yourself a journalist.

If it turns out-as my story would seem to indicate-that cannabis is the cure for cancer and the government suppressed this information for 25 years (and continues to suppress it), then the body count alone will make this the biggest holocaust in recorded history. Virtually all federal drug policy makers of both parties since 1975-including legislators, presidents and the DEA-will be complicit and criminally liable.

That’s why they don’t want this story covered.

To learn the history of cannabis prohibition, read http://www.jackherer.com. To read my story, type in the address at the beginning of this segment.

Raymond Cushing: raymondcushing@ireland.com

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Corporate media coverage: The Christian Science Monitor, 6/2/00 p.8, New York Times, 6/18/00 p.6, AP, 6/19/00

Faculty Evaluators: Robert Tellander, Peter Phillips, Ph.D.
Student Researchers: Melanie Burton, Michael Runas

Every weekday for the past 50 years, from eight o’clock in the morning to eleven o’clock at night, U.S. fighter planes in Korea have dropped 400 to 700 bombs on the Koon-ni range less than one mile from local villages. The targets for the bombs are islands in the beautiful Aia bay where the people derive their livelihoods by fishing. As the A10 and F-16 U.S. fighter aircrafts swoop over the countryside, they drop depleted uranium (DU) shells. The DU shells add radioactive contamination to the other toxic wastes and oil that have been accumulating near these villages for the last half century.

In July 2000, author Karen Talbot visited Maehyang-ri, a village eight miles from the bombing range, where low altitude planes fly directly overhead. She describes meeting an elderly woman who allowed them to visit her garage to see a hole in the roof and an unexploded bomb inside. Many bombs are found in the villages and there are thousands on the hillsides surrounding the area.

The constant bombardment, with its unbearable noise and pollution, has taken a great toll on the health of the villagers. Throughout the years, at least 12 people have been killed and numerous others have been wounded. The number of cancer cases is disproportionately large and growing, and women are increasingly experiencing miscarriages and birth defects. While U.S. military personnel are given earplugs, members of the South Korean police and military who stand guard inside the fences are not, nor are the villagers. Noise levels have been measured off the decibel scale. Mental health is a serious issue, with constant tension from noise and danger of accidents.

Lockheed-Martin now owns the Koon-ni range. This kind of privatization of the military comes as no surprise because 50 years of dropping bombs and spraying bullets has been very lucrative for arms manufacturers.

For the good part of 50 years most Koreans knew nothing about this, but protests are growing. Hundreds of thousands of students, farmers and workers are joining the protest. The popular demand “U.S. military out of Korea” has gained momentum in the wake of the recent highly successful summit between the leaders of North and South Korea. On December 12, 1998, more than 1,500 villagers occupied the bombing range, but were eventually pushed off by Korean police. In June 2000, a huge demonstration took place in Maehyand-ri with thousands of people from all over Korea, including a large contingent of autoworkers for the Kia Motor company. Five hundred people again stormed the fences and occupied the range.

Powerful protests against the U.S. bombing range in Vieques, Puerto Rico, have been widely covered in the world press, but the similar situation in Korea is not yet as well known.

The post 21. U.S Military Bombing Range Destroys Korean Village Life appeared first on Project Censored.

Faculty evaluator: Julie Allen, Ph.D.
Student researchers: Jennifer Swift, Natalie Guilbault

Research consistently finds that people with substantial disabilities suffer from violent and other major crime at rates four to ten times higher than that of the general population. Estimates are that around 5 million disabled people are victims of serious crime annually in the United States.

People with substantial disabilities represent at least 10 percent of the population of our country (including, among others, 1.8 percent with developmental disabilities, 5 percent with adult onset brain impairment, and 2.8 percent with severe major mental disorders). An estimated 40 percent of all American families have loved ones or close friends with substantial disabilities. Being disabled is not just being a person with a physical handicap. It also includes people with developmental disabilities (such as mental retardation, epilepsy, etc.), traumatic brain injury, severe major mental disorders, degenerate brain diseases (such as Alzheimer, Parkinson, and Huntington), permanent damage from a stroke, organic brain damage, and other substantial disabilities. Disabilities often make people easy targets for crime and abuse. Dan Sorensen estimated that in California only 4.5 percent of these crimes are actually reported to authorities, compared to an average 44 percent report rate for the general population. Several studies suggest that 80 to 85 percent of criminal abuse of residents in institutions is never reported to authorities. Evidence also shows that when these crimes are reported, there are lower rates of police follow-up, prosecution, and convictions. Reasons include the difficulty in investigating cases, the lack of special skills and special training required for these cases among law enforcement, the isolation of and communication difficulties for some victims, and the negative stereotypes and prejudices that continue to contribute to discrimination against these victims.

Sexual abuse rates of disabled men and women are also significantly higher than in the general population. Research shows, through structured interviews of 27 women and men with mild mental retardation in four San Francisco Bay Area counties, that just under 80 percent of the women and 54 percent of the men had been sexually abused at least one time. These rates compare to 13 percent of women in the general population who have been victims of at least one rape in their lifetimes.

A more recent study of 40,000 children in Omaha schools from 1995 to 1996 found that children with disabilities suffered a rate of abuse 3.44 times greater than children without disabilities, and children with behavior disorders suffered a relative rate of physical abuse 7.3 times that of non-disabled children. The relative rates for sexual assault was 5.5 times greater, for neglect 6.7 times higher, and for emotional abuse 7 times higher. These findings are consistent with other studies that uncover that children and adults with psychiatric disabilities suffer some of the highest rates of crime and criminal abuse among people with disabilities.

High crime rate against the disabled is significant when compared to the 8,000 hate crimes, one million elder abuse victims, and one million spousal assault victims each year. This means that crimes against the disabled make them proportionately one of the highest victim populations in the country.

Update by Dan Sorensen

The epidemic of crime and violence against people with disabilities will not be adequately addressed if it remains largely unknown. The media must educate the public about this problem as it has done about child abuse, elder abuse, and domestic violence. Crime and violence against people with disabilities is most likely the largest, measured by the number of violent crimes, among these islands of violence in our society.

Additional evidence continues to be uncovered since the publication of “The Invisible Victims.” A major epidemiological study of more than 40,000 school children found that the rate of violence against children with disabilities was 3.44 times greater than against children without disabilities and 5 to 7 times higher for some categories of children with disabilities. Dick Sobsey is studying homicides against people with developmental disabilities and is finding a pattern of sentencing discrimination with these murderers getting substantially lesser sentences. Several studies report very high rates (8.5 to over 20 times higher) of violent crime against people with psychiatric disabilities.

The Governor of California has established the first permanent comprehensive program that addresses crime and violence against people with disabilities, The Crime Victims with Disabilities Initiative. The Attorney General of California is committed to developing a training package on how to investigate and prosecute crimes against people with disabilities, how to interview the victims, and how to prepare for the related trials. Important work in this area is going on in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Texas, Vermont, and many other states.

The press and media continue to largely ignore this issue. I know of only three significant stories on this issue over the last ten years. Most reports describe isolated crimes with no hint that there is a large, serious, and persistent pattern of violence directed against people with disabilities.

Interested persons can contact Dan Sorensen at (916) 651-9906 or dsorense@dmhhq.state.ca.us. Another excellent source of information is from ICAD at http://www.quasar.ualberta.ca/ddc/ICAD/icad.html. Cavet also has good information at http://www.cavenet2.org.

The post 20. Disabled Most Likely to be Victims of Serious Crime appeared first on Project Censored.

CounterPunch, London Observer, June 1-15, 2000 and July 2, 2000
Title: McCaffery’s Plagues: New Biowar on Drugs
Authors: Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair

London Observer, July 2, 2000
Title: U.S. Prepares to Spray Genetically-Modified Herbicides
Author: Ed Vulliamy

Corporate media coverage: Milwaukee Journal, 12/23/99, p.A8, Seattle Times, 7/2/00, p. C3, Minnesota Public Radio, Marketplace, 10/3/00

After the Project Censored Award’s deadline the following story also appeared

Inter-Presse, October 19, 2000
Plan Colombia’s Herbicide Spraying Causing Health and Environmental Problems
Author: Kintto Lucus

Faculty Evaluators: Tom Lough, Ph.D., Tom Ormond, Ph.D.
Student Researchers: Jennifer Swift, Katie Anderson

The United States plans to deploy, or may have already deployed, new biological weapons for the war on drugs that seriously threaten both humans and the environment. The bio-weapon is Fusarium EN-4, a plant fungus used in many chemical weapons developed by the United States in 1950s and 60s. Fusarium is being redesigned to attack coca, cannabis, and opium crops in producer countries in the Third World.

This work is proceeding despite evidence that the fusarium, if deployed, will have profound and disastrous impacts on the humans and ecologies of the countries in which they are used.

Pathogens developed long ago at Fort Detrick, Maryland, the center for the U.S. bio-war program, were frozen but not destroyed when the facility was closed by President Nixon in 1969. Veterans of the Soviet biological warfare effort are now working on this research with UN funding in order to shield the United States from charges of violating the internationally negotiated biological weapons convention.

Peru has already banned the testing and/or deployment of the fungi fusarium. Colombia, however, was forced to accept spraying as part of a $1.8 billion aid package that was approved in Congress in July 2000.

Mycotoxicologist Jeremy Bigwood, working with a fellowship grant to carry out research into fusarium derivatives used in biological warfare, states that the threat fusarium presents can not be fully defined because “it mutates into another organism capable of attacking many other plants.” Bigwood also states that fusarium can mutate and lethally affect humans with immune deficiencies.

Eduardo Posada, president of the Colombian Center for International Physics, found fusarium to be “highly toxic.” His data found that the mortality rate among hospital patients who were immune-deficient and infected by the fungus was 76 percent. “The mutated fungi can cause disease in a large number of crops, including tomatoes, peppers, flowers, corn and vines,” he said. He added that the mutated genus could stay in the ground for 40 years. According to Bigwood, U.S. government researchers initially insisted that the EN-4 strain was “species specific.” But, he says, there are 200 other plant species within the genus that don’t contain coca that could be affected.

Kintto Lucas reports that the Colombian military is using U.S.-supplied planes to fumigate huge areas near the Ecuador border. Border residents reported that last summer and autumn planes could be heard over Colombia, and that several people in the area have died from extensive fumigation. A Monsanto herbicide, glycophosphate, is reportedly being used, but there are fears that fusarium is, or will be used in the regional spraying as well.

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Third World Resurgence #110-111, Fall 1999
Title: A Call for Support for African Group Proposal on TRIPS Article 27.3(b) on Patenting of Life

Earth First!, March/April 2000
Looting Indigenous Medicine in Chiapas
Author: Rural Advancement Foundation International

Faculty Evaluator: Tom Lough, Ph.D.
Student Researchers: Ambrosia Crumley, Karen Parlette, Adam Sullens

“We, indigenous peoples from around the world, believe that nobody can own what exists in nature except nature herself. “ This is the first line from the indigenous people’s statement on intellectual property rights. There is a portion of the WTO agreement, called the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), that will allow multinational corporations to apply for patents on living creatures and life processes. Indigenous peoples from around the world, however, believe that private ownership of life forms is unnatural and inappropriate.

On July 25, 1999, a gathering of indigenous peoples signed a document that called for an amendment to the TRIPS agreement that would be put as a priority item on the agenda at the WTO Ministerial Conference in Seattle. The document eloquently states that all life forms and the life-creating processes are sacred and should not be subject to proprietary ownership. Specifically targeted was article 27.3b of TRIPS, which will denigrate and undermine rights to culture and intellectual heritage; destroy plant, animal and genetic resources; and even discriminate against indigenous ways of thinking and behaving. Indigenous knowledge and cultural heritage collectively evolve through generations. This means that no single person can claim to have invented or discovered medicinal plants, seeds, or other living things.

The TRIPS agreement as it stands substantially weakens indigenous people’s access to and control over genetic and biological resources, and contributes to the deterioration of their quality of life. The people are very specific about what should be amended to article 27.3b. Amendments should clearly prohibit the patenting of plants and animals. They aim to ensure that a system is created that will protect knowledge, innovations, and practices in farming, agriculture, health, and medical care, and conserve the biodiversity of indigenous peoples and farmers. Agreements are needed to prevent the piracy of seeds, medicinal plants, and the knowledge about their use; and prevent the destruction and conversion of indigenous people’s land.

In Chiapas, Mexico, 11 indigenous people’s organizations, known as the Council of Indigenous Traditional Midwives and Healers Chiapas, are demanding that a $2.5 million, U.S. government-funded bioprospecting program suspend its search for indigenous medicine in Chiapas, Mexico. The project is cited as robbery of traditional indigenous knowledge and resources, for the sole purpose of producing pharmaceuticals that will not benefit the communities that have managed and nurtured these resources for thousands of years. The companies involved include Glaxo-Wellcome, Bristol Myers Squibb, and Dow Elanco Agrosciences. The project claims that royalties will be sent back to the indigenous people, but the reality is that long-term benefits may never materialize, and many people reject both intellectual property and the process established for benefit sharing. The critical issue now is that the project is apparently proceeding not only without proper consultation with the affected communities but also against the express wishes of a very significant sector of the Chiapas community.

Update by Kimberly Wilson

The United States remains one of the only countries in the world that recognizes patents on life forms. It would be unthinkable in Thailand, for example, to allow a private company to claim ownership of medicinal plants, animal cells, or human genes. The U.S. patent office has thrown open the doors to the biotechnology industry, allowing entire species of plants, transgenic animals, and over 500,000 whole or partial genes to be patented. Under the U.S. system, basic biological resources are privatized-accessible only to those willing and able to pay royalty fees for access or research. Questions about new genetic technologies in agricultural and human research go beyond social and environmental concerns, raising fundamental issues of power and control. Who should be granted property rights over pieces of the natural world? Who should control common biological and genetic resources?

In the past year, the issues of life patenting received a considerable amount of media attention as scientists announced a draft map of the human genome. Some of the country’s top geneticists have formed ties with private companies and are now luring investors with promises of strong patent portfolios based on human genetic information. President Clinton and Tony Blair took up the issue when they met in March 2000. Their joint statement, which seemed to criticize gene patents, led to the plummeting of biotech stocks worldwide. Sensing the vulnerability of the industry, critics grew quieter and the mainstream press has largely overlooked the issue. Within the scientific community, questions about patents on life continue to be controversial. A few monthly science journals report regularly on the issue.

The circle of knowledge about life patenting needs to widen. It is not necessary to be a geneticist or a lawyer to understand the basics of patent law, or to see the natural world becoming commodified via the patent system. Rather than insisting that other countries change their patent laws to accommodate U.S. life patents, citizens can insist that the US change its laws to harmonize with the rest of the world. There are a handful of organizations that offer educational materials and activist resources for those interested in learning more.

Council for Responsible Genetics (CRG): http://www.gene-watch.org
Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI): http://www.rafi.org
Greenpeace International and Greenpeace Germany: http://www.greenpeace.org
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP): http://www.iatp.org

Publications for further reading:
Martin Teitel & Hope Shand, “The Ownership of Life: When Patents and Values Clash,” 1998.
Kristin Dawkins, “Gene Wars: The Politics of Biotechnology,” October 1997.
Kimbrell, Andrew “The Human Body Shop” 1998.
Kimberly Wilson: kimberly.wilson@sfo.greenpeace.org

Update by Hope Shand of RAFI

Bioprospecting or Biopiracy?

The vast majority of the world’s biological diversity originates in the tropics and sub-tropics. The genes from plants, animals, and microorganisms, found primarily in the South, are the “strategic raw materials” for the development of new food, and pharmaceutical and industrial products. But genetic resources are seldom “raw materials” in the traditional sense, because they have been selected, nurtured, and improved upon by farmers and indigenous peoples over thousands of years. When scientists and researchers go searching for valuable genetic material and traditional knowledge about them, it is often called “bioprospecting.” But critics call it “biopiracy.”

“Biopiracy” refers to the appropriation of the knowledge and genetic resources of farming and indigenous communities by individuals or institutions who seek exclusive monopoly control (patents or intellectual property) of these resources and knowledge.

Indigenous People Protest in Chiapas: The efforts of indigenous peoples in Chiapas, Mexico, to stop a U.S. government-funded bioprospecting project illustrates the larger struggles of communities and nations to control their sovereign genetic resources and knowledge in a world where biological products and processes are being privatized and patented.

In December 1999 Rural Advancement Foundation International first wrote about eleven indigenous people’s organizations under the umbrella of the Council of Indigenous Doctors and Midwives from Chiapas (Consejo de Medicos y Parteras Indigenas Tradicionales de Chiapas) who were demanding the suspension of the International Collaborative Biodiversity Group-Maya (ICBG-Maya). The ICBG-Maya is a U.S. government-funded $2.5 million, 5-year project aimed at the bioprospecting of medicinal plants and traditional knowledge of the Mayan people. The project is led by the University of Georgia, in cooperation with a Mexican university research center, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (ECOSUR), and Molecular Nature Ltd., a biotechnology company based in Wales, U.K. The ICBG’s self-stated goal is to promote drug discovery from natural sources, biodiversity conservation, and sustainable economic growth in developing countries.

The council believes that the bioprospecting project and the pharmaceuticals they seek to discover will not ultimately benefit the communities that have managed and nurtured these resources for thousands of years. According to Sebastian Luna, a spokesperson for the council, “the project explicitly proposes to patent and privatize resources and knowledge that have always been collectively owned. …Besides being totally contradictory to our culture and traditions, the project creates conflict within our communities as some individuals, pressured by the grave economic situation, collaborate with the researchers for a few pesos or tools.”

After one year of fruitless talks with the ICBG-Maya and Mexican government authorities, the council held a press conference on September 12, 2000, to again demand termination of the Chiapas project and all bioprospecting projects in Mexico. Shortly thereafter, the Mexican government denied the ICBG-Maya permission to conduct bio-assays (that is, analysis of bioactive compounds) on plants collected in Chiapas. While the ICBG project is not officially terminated, its activities have been temporarily suspended.

RAFI believes that biopiracy is the inevitable consequence of international agreements such as the Biodiversity Convention that have no real capacity to regulate bioprospecting or to ensure equitable benefit-sharing with local communities. Without agreed rules and monitoring mechanisms, all bioprospecting becomes biopiracy. RAFI’s web site (http://www.rafi.org) provides regular updates on biopiracy worldwide. Together with partner civil society organizations, RAFI has produced the Captain Hook Awards: 2000-a poster highlighting the most egregious cases of biopiracy as well as the most exemplary actions by civil society and governments to halt these practices.

The post 18. Indigenous People Challenge Private Ownership and Patenting of Life appeared first on Project Censored.

SF Bay Guardian, 8/23/2000
Title: Colony Kosovo
Author: Christian Parenti
http://www.sfbg.com/News/34/47/47wvkoso.html

Faculty evaluator: Peter Phillips Ph.D.
Student researchers: Jaleah Winn, Katie Sims, Dana Balicki, Steve Quartz

The G-17 is a Yugoslav economist group that supported presidential candidate Vojislav Kostunica and wrote the policy statements for the post-election economic reform of Yugoslavia.

The impression the G-17 likes to give is that it is an independent and Yugoslav-oriented group. The reality is vastly different. It is actually funded through the Washington-based “Center for International Private Enterprise” (CIPE), a group set up through the National Endowment for Democracy, in return a CIA-related group created in 1983.

The G-17 group calls for Yugoslavia to work more closely with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) toward the development of a market economy. Former Eastern bloc neighboring countries that have followed this tact have had massive wage deflation and increased poverty for the bulk of their citizens.

One of the key participants in the G-17 group is Veselin Vukotic. It was Vukotic who in 1989-90 orchestrated the breakup of more than 50 percent of Yugoslavia’s industry, some 1,100 firms, resulting in the layoff of more than 614,000 workers.

Three of the G-17 members, Dusan Vujovic, Zeliko Bogetic, and Branko Milanovic are Washington-based staff members of the IMF and World Bank. Dusan Vujovic, a senior economist at the World Bank is the key link between the G-17 and Western institutions. From 1994-96, Vujovic played a key role in forcing structural adjustments programs in Bulgaria. Social services, including price controls, subsidized food, housing, and medical care, were stripped away. The World Bank now admits that more than 90 percent of Bulgarians live below extreme poverty level.

On its website the G-17 states that its aim is to establish, “…a network of experts in all Serbian towns able to create and practically implement necessary changes in all fields of social life. With Kostunica in power in Yugoslavia, the G-17 will try to implement market reforms. They are not simply a group of economists, but rather a network supported by the IMF and the World Bank.

Other former Socialist/communist countries have followed IMF and World Bank recommendations. Their first activity is to do away with social service protections. Second, they use economic manipulation and new laws to force business-public and private-into bankruptcy. These businesses are then purchased at rock bottom prices by multinational corporations. In Hungary, market reforms led to the closing of the only light bulb manufacturing firm, forcing everyone in Hungary to now buy light bulbs manufactured by General Electric.

The Ukraine signed an agreement with the IMF in 1994. They received a $360 million loan in exchange for “economic shock treatment” policies for their citizens. The price of bread shot up 300 percent, electricity 600 percent, and public transportation 900 percent, and the Ukraine currency collapsed. People were forced to buy necessities at “dollarized” prices when they were earning, on average, $10 a month. The U.S. dumped grain surpluses on the Ukraine market, destroying the domestic agriculture market. Misery and poverty skyrocketed in the Ukraine after IMF policies were implemented.

According to writer and IMF researcher Professor Chossudovsky, the G-17 paradigm economic program for Yugoslavia contains the same measures the IMF forced on Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Peru, and many other nations. The results have been social and economic devastation. The same thing will happen in Yugoslavia if the G-17 is allowed to implement their policy recommendations.

Update by Michel Chossudovsky and Jared Israel
Kostunica Coalition Drives Up Prices & Blames…Milosevic

The Kostunica government has already started to implement deadly IMF “economic medicine.” The first step consisted of lifting price controls on fuel and basic consumer goods, and services. Prices have increased, as much as three times, causing extreme hardship for Yugoslav working people.

The country had been impoverished by years of economic sanctions, not to mention the IMF reforms applied in 1989-90, before the break-up of federal Yugoslavia. But a system of state subsidies and price controls nonetheless prevented a total collapse in the standard of living, as occurred in neighboring Bulgaria.

That system of price controls is now being disbanded by the Kostunica government on orders of the International Monetary Fund (IMF):

“When Kostunica supporters forced out most managers in state-owned shops and factories and put their own people in charge, that system of controls collapsed and prices immediately shot up. The cost of cooking oil has more than tripled since last Friday, when Milosevic announced that he was stepping aside. The prices of sugar and cigarettes are about to jump again. After Kostunica’s supporters forced out Milosevic-era factory directors, the new ones are moving quickly to make their plants more profitable.” (Los Angeles Times, October 15, 2000)

To make sure the government could not finance subsidies, the G-17 economists forcefully took control of the Central Bank and immediately imposed a freeze on money creation (“printing of money”). This held up the outflow of cash, which the government needed to sustain price controls on basic consumer goods.

According to interviews conducted with Belgrade residents shortly after the election, the price of milk had already doubled from 8 to 14 dinars per liter, largely affecting children; the price of cooking oil had more than tripled, from 13.5 to 55 dinars; sugar had gone from 8 to 45 dinars. These interviews support the earlier Los Angeles Times report.

Shoppers are commenting, “Ah, democratic prices!” The Serbian use of black humor masks rising anger among ordinary people. Faced with this simmering rebellion, the Kostunica government, advised by the G-17 economists, have performed a dazzling flip.

Prior to the Oct. 5 coup d’état, the government made some attempt to protect domestic producers and ensure (under very difficult conditions) the distribution of essential food staples, fuel, and electricity at controlled prices. The Kostunica coalition abolished price controls then seemed to be using the suffering it created to justify the dumping of low priced (often inferior) food and products, thus destroying small producers.

The Western media, which just a few days earlier had congratulated Kostunica for removing price controls, now uncritically trumpets the line that it’s all Milosevic’s fault.

Concerning the rapid increase in prices, the program drafted by Dinkic’s G-17 Plus is rather explicit:
“Immediately after taking the office, the new government shall abolish all types of subsidies. This measure must be implemented without regrets or hesitation, since it will be difficult if not impossible to apply later, in view of the fact that in the meantime strong lobbies may appear and do their best to block such measures… This initial step in economic liberalization must be undertaken as a “shock therapy” as its radical nature does not leave space for gradualism of any kind. (From the G-17 ‘Program of Radical economic Reform’http://www.g17.org.yu/english/programm/programr9.htm )

The G-17 program they wrote attacking Milosevic had stated in no uncertain terms that “they would do it,”-that is, they would get rid of price controls. They have driven Milosevic out and begun to “do it.” Naturally if prices have spiraled, it is Milosevic’s fault.

Michel Chossudovsky: chossudovsky@videotron.ca
Jared Israel: Emperors1000@aol.com

The post 17. IMF and World Bank Staff Tightly Connected to New Yugoslav Government appeared first on Project Censored.

Konformist, March 2000
Title: Ethnic Weapons for Ethnic Cleansing
Author Greg Bishop
http://www.konformist.com

North Coast Xpress, Fall 2000
The Human Genome Project and Eugenics
Author Robert Lederman

Corporate news coverage: Daily Telegraph (London) 7/7/00, Agence France Presse 1/21/99, The Gazette (Montreal) A-4, Baltimore Sun 1/22/99 A-18, The Salt Lake City Tribune 1/27/99 A-13, The Times Union (Albany) 2/2/99 D-2,

Faculty/Community Evaluators: Rabbi Michael Robinson, Velma Guillory-Taylor, Ed.D.
Student Researchers: Terrie Girdner, Karen Parlette, Jennifer Swift

The Human Genome Project may now open the door to the development and use of genetic weapons targeted at specific ethnic groups. This project is currently being conducted under the auspices of the U.S. Energy Department, which also oversees America’s nuclear weapon arsenal.

In October 1997, Dr. Wayne Nathanson, chief of the Science and Ethics Department of the Medical Society of the United Kingdom, warned the annual meeting of the Society that “gene therapy” might possibly be turned into “gene weapons” which could potentially be used to target particular genes possessed by certain groups of people. These weapons, Nathanson warned, could be delivered not only in the forms already seen in warfare such as gas and aerosol, but could also be added to water supplies, causing not only death but sterility and birth defects in targeted groups.

Current estimates of the cost of developing a “gene weapon” have been placed at around $50 million, still quite a stretch for an isolated band of neo-Nazis, but well within the capabilities of covert government programs.

On November 15, 1998, the London Times reported that Israel claimed to have successfully developed a genetically specific “ethnic bullet” that targets Arabs. When an Israeli government spokesman was asked to confirm the existence of ethnic weapons, he did not deny that they had them, but rather said, “we have a basket full of serious surprises that we will not hesitate to use if we feel that the state of Israel is under serious threat.”

Some scientists worry that the modified genes that corporations have spliced into fish, fowl, fruit and vegetables have permanently altered the world’s food supply. Some may be intended to reduce populations.

The U.S. has a long history of interest in such genetic research. The current home of the Human Genome Project is the Cold Springs Harbor laboratory on Long Island, NY-the exact site of the notorious Eugenics Research Office that was started in 1910 by the Harriman family. The project’s 1910 agenda included governmental imposition of sanctions on such human rights as reproduction, and on U.S. immigration, based on the alleged inferiority of particular ethnic groups. The Eugenics Research Project established medical and psychological conditions that would qualify one for sterilization or euthanasia. Prominent advocates of the program such as the Rockefeller family, Henry Ford, and Margaret Sanger helped smooth the way for the passage of forcible sterilization laws in 25 states. These laws allowed the forcible sterilization of tens of thousands of people, mostly of minority status, during the first half of the 20th century.

The November 1970 issue of the Military Review published an article entitled “Ethnic Weapons” for command-level military personnel. The author of the article was Dr. Carl Larson, head of the Department of Human Genetics at the Institute of Genetics in Lund, Sweden. Dr Larson wrote of how genetic variations in races are concurrent with differences in tolerances for various substances. For instance, large segments of Southeast Asian populations display a lactose intolerance due to the absence of the enzyme lactase in the digestive system. A biological weapon could conceivably take advantage of this genetic variance and incapacitate or kill an entire population.

Update by Greg Bishop

The ubiquitous nature of racism and the ruling power structure’s history of handling “undesirables,” as well as dealing with an enemy (almost always of different racial stock than a dominant aggressor) virtually assures us that the more powerful countries and their allies are continuing to look into new and better ways of subduing and killing whole (or major parts of) foreign populations.

When the London Times broke the story of the Israeli bioweapons project and interest in the development of pathogens that would disable or kill by ethnicity, they quoted an unnamed British intelligence source that said that these sorts of weapons were “theoretically possible.” They were not only “theoretical” but had been researched for nearly 50 years. The lynchpin of the Times article was the writer’s reliance on a specifically genetic explanation for ethnic weapons.

Bioweapons have been used since at least the Roman Empire, when armies dumped dead animals into an enemy’s water supply to spread disease. Research into ethnic-specific bioweapons was first broached publicly in 1970, when Dr. Carl Larson’s article “Ethnic Weapons” appeared in the Military Review. Larson discussed the possibility of utilizing differing races’ sensitivity or low resistance to specific compounds (such as lactose intolerance among Asians) as either a bioweapon in itself, or as a “vector” that would allow other poisons or microorganisms to more easily enter a human body when defenses were lowered or destroyed. This method was not as surgically accurate as the military might want it to be, since many populations are not completely homogenous. The strange thing about the Times coverage was that it completely ignored this history and the fact that any technology for killing more of the enemy than your own would most likely be (and has been) looked upon with interest by military strategists.

No updates have yet appeared (or I have been unable to locate any) on the subject of Israeli ethnic weapons. In this country, continuing a historic policy toward Native Americans, it has been revealed that the American Indian Health Service (IHS-funded by the Federal Government, who employ the doctors and nurses) coerced Native American men and women into forced sterilizations in the early to mid 1970s. The General Accounting Office (GAO) estimated that 3,400 people (mostly women) underwent the treatment, but their study only covered four of twelve IHS regions for four years. Activists put the estimate much higher, at 60,000 to 70,000. This, coupled with the suspicion raised by the hantavirus outbreak in the Four Corners region of Arizona/New Mexico/Colorado/Utah keeps suspicion and fingers pointed at the federal government and at least some government policies toward the American Indian population. (Hantavirus is one of many “new” diseases that have come under suspicion of having their origins in genetic engineering or biowarfare labs.) As reported in a 1994 Project Censored update, Utah’s Dugway Proving Grounds biowarfare research site was also reopened despite local residents’ protests over fears that the facility was originally closed because of safety concerns. Fort Dietrick, the site of the most notorious CIA drug and army biowarfare research in the United States now houses major research facilities of the National Cancer Institute, raising issues of conflict (or collusion) or interest.

No major press outlets were consulted about publication of the story. It was written to appear on the Konformist.com website. Public awareness spread from there. There appears to have been no followup in the mainstream media on the original 1998 London Times story.

For more information on this story:

Cole, Leonard A. Clouds of Secrecy: The Amy’s Germ Warfare Tests Over Populated Areas, Rowman & Littlefield, Totowa, N.J. , 1988.
Hersh, Seymour M. Chemical and Biological Warfare: America’s Hidden Arsenal, Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis, 1968.
Murphy, Sean. No Fire, No Thunder: The Threat of Chemical and Biological Weapons, Monthly Review Press, New York , 1984.
Piller, Charles. Gene Wars: Military Control Over the New Genetic Technologies, Beech Tree Books, New York , 1988.
Spiers, Edward M. Chemical and Biological Weapons: A Study in Proliferation, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1994.

Websites:

http://www.disinfo.com/pages/dossier/id293/pg1.html
Article by Preston Peet on U.S. biowarfare testing in Puerto Rico in the 1930s. Island population was deliberately infected with cancer in a program run by Dr. Cornelius Rhodes, who went on to win seats on the Atomic Energy Commission and the Rockefeller Institute, as well as running U.S. chemical warfare programs in WWII. Many useful links.
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/sterilize.html
Long and detailed article on the American Indian sterilization program.
cns.miis.edu/pubs/reports/zilin.htm
This Center for Nonproliferation Studies site features text of threat assessment presented to Congressional subcommittee in October 1999, by Dr. Raymond Zilinskas. Includes information on bioweapons and ethnic weapons.
http://www.gene.ch/gentech/1999/Jan-Feb/msg00070.html
Genetech discussion list featuring exchanges on ethnic weapons. Concentrates on possibility of genetically engineered versions.

Update by Robert Sterling, Editor of the Konformist

Let me add personal knowledge of response to the article of which the author Greg Bishop was unaware. While the media response was predictably non-existent, I did receive numerous comments that spoke volumes. The main thrust of “Ethnic Weapons for Ethnic Cleansing” was reports of an Israeli biowarfare program targeting Arabs. One of the key groups of readers of the Konformist are Zionist Jews, courtesy of the promotion of the provocative writings of Israel’s Barry Chamish, a dedicated Zionist who has done tremendous work investigating the Rabin assassination and the suppressions involved with it. What is interesting is that, though I received quite a few Emails from the Zionist community, none denied the accuracy of the story. Instead, they brashly admitted it was true, then added it was necessary because Israel needed to defend itself from its Arab neighbors. What is most telling is that many letters included references to Arabs that were derogatory and dehumanizing. That such a destructive philosophy is accepted by so many uncritically in Israel explains much of the vicious thuggery performed against the Palestinians over the last four months (not to mention the last 33 years). This is why I submitted the story, because it underscored an important point that no group has a monopoly of hatred and oppression, and that authoritarian values of all flavors must be rejected and battled with words.

Update by Robert Lederman

While the average person has no particular interest in nor any tangible use for the
Human Genome Project it, more than the economy or whichever political party is in power in Washington, will very significantly mold the future of human life on this planet. Like its origin, Eugenics, the Human Genome Project (HGP) has been presented to the public as an effort by our government to help people live happier, healthier, and more productive lives. Nothing could be further from the truth.

When I first wrote the article “The Human Genome Project and Eugenics” I received a lot of correspondence from media people and scientists who felt I was unfairly associating the HGP with Eugenics and its expression in Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. Since then I’ve found on the HGP’s own website an introduction to the project that makes exactly the same connection in no uncertain terms.

From vector.cshl.org/eugenics.html:

“Although it is easy to conceive of the Human Genome Project and genetic engineering as an entirely new epoch in scientific history, this is not our first-scale involvement with human genetics. Our current rush into the “gene age” has striking parallels to the eugenics movement of the early decades of the 20th century. Eugenicists sought an exclusively genetic explanation of human development, neglecting the important contribution of the environment. Their flawed data were the basis for social legislation to separate racial and ethnic groups, restrict immigration from southern and eastern Europe, and sterilize people considered “genetically unfit.” Elements of the American eugenics movement were models for the Nazis, whose radical adaptation of eugenics culminated in the Holocaust.”

As of this writing, the human genomes of the populations of Estonia, Tonga, and Iceland have been bought and patented by private corporations with many more such corporatized human lineages to follow. James Watson, the discoverer of the structure of DNA and the project’s first director, has spoken publicly of his enthusiasm for human germline engineering-making permanent inheritable changes in the human populations’ DNA. In the brief time since I wrote the article, insurance companies have publicly admitted that they will use prospective clients’ DNA in deciding whether to grant them health insurance. Mayors and governors across America are following NYC Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in demanding that DNA samples be taken from every person arrested regardless of how minor their crime. Man-made transgenic organisms are being introduced into the human food supply and environment under the guise of distributing vaccines and improving nutrition with what can only be described as either reckless enthusiasm or an intent to do harm. In short, we will soon be living in a society in which Eugenics science applied by government may play a greater role in ones destiny than any other factor.

While all of this is happening the public is being misled into believing that the Project’s main purpose is to cure diseases and extend human life. Once this genie is out of the bottle, it will never be put back in. While it may seem like science fiction to most people, the Human Genome Project represents the single biggest threat to human freedom that has ever been devised.

The following websites contain a great amount of scientific, historical, and propaganda material on Eugenics and the Human Genome Project. Some of the sites are anti-eugenics and others, including a neo-Nazi site, are pro-eugenics and blatantly racist. My including them in this list should not be construed as an endorsement of any of the statements contained therein, other than those in my own articles.

Baltech.org/lederman/spray/
http://www.hli.org/issues/pp/bcreview/index.html
http://www.georgetown.edu/research/nrcbl/scopenotes/sn28.htm
http://www.biol.tsukuba.ac.jp/~macer/SG.html
http://www.notdeadyet.org/eughis.html
http://www.techreview.com/articles/as96/allen.html
http://www.hli.org/issues/pp/bcreview/index.html
http://www.csu.edu.au/learning/ncgr/gpi/grn/edures/scope.28.2.html
users.erols.com/straymond/EUGENICS2.htm
home.att.net/~eugenics/
http://www.sightings.com/general3/eugene.htm
www4.stormfront.org/posterity/

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